Dominance, politics, and physiology: voters' testosterone changes on the night of
the 2008 United States presidential election.

BACKGROUND: Political elections are dominance competitions. When men win a dominance
competition, their testosterone levels rise or remain stable to resist a circadian
decline; and when they lose, their testosterone levels fall. However, it is unknown
whether this pattern of testosterone change extends beyond interpersonal competitions
to the vicarious experience of winning or losing in the context of political elections.
Women's testosterone responses to dominance competition outcomes are understudied,
and to date, a clear pattern of testosterone changes in response to winning and losing
dominance competitions has not emerged. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The present
study investigated voters' testosterone responses to the outcome of the 2008 United
States Presidential election. 183 participants provided multiple saliva samples before
and after the winner was announced on Election Night. The results show that male Barack
Obama voters (winners) had stable post-outcome testosterone levels, whereas testosterone
levels dropped in male John McCain and Robert Barr voters (losers). There were no
significant effects in female voters. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The findings indicate
that male voters exhibit biological responses to the realignment of a country's dominance
hierarchy as if they participated in an interpersonal dominance contest.

My research focuses on understanding how emotional events modulate cognitive processes
in the human brain. We aim to identify brain regions that encode the emotional properties
of sensory stimuli, and to show how these regions interact with neural systems supporting
social cognition, executive control, and learning and memory. To achieve this goal,
we use a variety of cognitive neuroscience techniques in human subject populations.
These include psychophysiological monitoring, functional magnetic

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